Winning in the Age of Bohonomics

Archive for the tag “art management”

Lifestyle is one of the most important things for today´s people. It is even more important for tomorrow´s people and youngsters. Lifestyle affects the way people work and live their leisure time. A key trend for change in lifestyles has been the individualization, or even ultra-individualization. Many people seek after distinctive way of life or very special work profile. Everyday life is a series of events with the meaning and intention. Human relations, clothing, patterns of consumption and entertainment are parts of lifestyle. Lifestyle affects person’s values, attitudes and general outlook on life. We select our lifestyle in order to enjoy our lives.

With a special bohemian attitude life can be more interesting and more enjoyable. We can understand our realities from the art perspective, not only from science or religious perspective.

People want to live their own lives so that they stand out from other people in some way. “Be unique or do not exist” is one behavioral rule of bohemian people. For bohemians the way of life is a key issue. It’s hard to imagine that bohemian persons would like to be part of a social establishment, or the bohemian expert settle for mediocrity. On the contrary, bohemian people shun mediocrity. They make themselves look like the operating environment, very personal and tailored for very special cultural rules. They are thinking: The more special – the better; the more strange – the better. In competitive urban environments many experts are talking about the Warhol economy, where bohemians drive creative industries like fashion, art and music. The cultural scene of New York is an arena of trendsetters and emerging trends.

Bohemian is a word developed in the 1800s in France. This generalized term describes many artists, creators and writers, who spend their unusual and irregular life. One Finnish poet and legendary rock musician Juice Leskinen described this kind of life style by writing a bohemian note: “I received a tattered life”. He really did it.

Originally the word meant the Bohemian Czech historical region of Bohemia population. Original Bohemian artists resembled the French view, wandering gypsies, who lived outside of the established social practices, and who were uninterested in conveying conventional circuit disapproval. Bohemian lifestyle is exceptional, avoiding traditional parties and the public acceptance. Often they have sharp contradictions with conventional political views, beliefs and opinions. Bohemian are having typically quite liberal sexual activity, non-material, very, very modest lifestyle and often living in voluntary poverty. In addition, a bohemian culture is a kind of “romanticism of misery.” Bohemians often make virtue out of necessity.

In history, typical bohemian lifestyle cultures have been avant-garde, the culture of the Beat-generation, Goth culture, hippie movement, liberalism and French Moulin Rouge. For example, avant-garde (referring to “advance guard “) refers to people or works that are experimental and a violation of the established trends of their time. The word is used especially in the fields of visual arts, film, literature and music in the context of new trends, but also for any new paradigm, for example when talking about culture or the novel political sphere.

The concept of avant-garde has become a topical debate on the fate of modernism. Bohemians are avant-garde persons in their lifestyle. For bohemians – the average has always been over.

Avant-garde artists and people are sometimes combined with street art, graffiti, or with anti-trends, wild cards and the ground-breaking new emerging issues. However, avant-garde is not a single art movement such as surrealism and cubism, since important concepts are constantly changing over time. Some of the avant-garde strategy of action is publication of manifest/s. It is usually a series of strong statements expressing the direction of movement of artistic ideas and intentions, and what the opposing advocates. The manifesto can be one key achievement of the artist or artist team achievement. Provocations are important part of the bohemian communications. Manifests are underlining new forms of cultural expression. Looking for new means of expression was almost willful in all artistic fields of avant-garde. Teenagers are often having bohemian sub-cultures because they like provocations.

Often the big idea is polarized and manifests to the publication of a major fuss as possible “fanfare”. Management of art and cultural creative industries is more demanding than conventional business branches. It is close to innovation management, but underlining art and aesthetics as key issues of management. Organizations wanting to attract bohemian personalities and creative thinkers need to emphasize a strong commitment to excellence and artistic integrity to be successful beyond the short term. Often great world class artists are working outside the establishment and the major system. For example, great film maker Woody Allen wants to work outside big film studios. He seeks actively distribution in the USA and Europe as a precursor to securing financing to see his art and film projects to fruition. Artistic ventures are sometimes very controversial and provocative. Sometimes artists are very focused on non-profit management organizations and do not want to be “Wall Street capitalists”.

In the 20th century it became very clear that the avant-garde did not fit in the totalitarian societies. Bohemians are not “fitting in” to totalitarian cultures. The German Nazis did the Bauhaus art school and thought it impossible to operate all of the modernist trends of “decadence of art.” Also Soviet Bolshevik repression of the century was an impassioned avant-garde. Spanish philosopher and essayist Jose Ortega y´Gasset says that the immediate effect of every avant-garde is that it creates its own top-level elite. He said that avant-garde creates obscure phenomena to divide audiences who understand and those who do not understand the new genres of avant-garde. This cultural gap does not follow any political or economic lines. There is also trans-avant-garde, which means the ultimate avant-garde border, the other side of the art. This “other side” is very interesting zone for bohemian artists and scientists. This kind of trans-avant-garde culture is having many impacts on economy and politics, when political and economic agents cannot trust in existing cultural structures and organizations. Trans-avant-garde is a vital source of wild cards of our times.

Avant-garde is key concept of bohemian culture. There have been artist forms of avant-garde. Such artist avant-garde movements have been avant-garde-jazz, cubism, Dadaism, futurism, impressionism, expressionism, abstract expressionism, modernism, surrealism and so called Zaum movement.

Another key concept of bohemian culture is activism. Activism is a policy of direct action. The concept of citizenship or civic activism means a national public functioning of society, such as the actions of different associations. Activism can be profiled as a case for or against an issue. A citizen, who actively works either independently or in a group pushing something, is often referred to as an activist.

Activism is receiving public attention in forms of demonstrations and civil disobedience. Change activism includes campaigning, lobbying, publications, seminars, and non-formal co-operation with policy makers. Civil action is framed by non-governmental organizations and movements, which bring in the same way-minded people together, organize, and organize their activities and act in some forms.

Today, Internet activism has moved to the virtual networks, and, is has taken new forms of web logs and wikis. Internet activism is today having a dynamic nature of trans-media and it has challenged both the traditional policy making and the old established media, and it has created a new and alternative publicities as well as exposing the politically sensitive information that traditional media has not been able to “find out”. The attention economy or experience economy are the key strategic arenas of bohemian tribes and individuals.